


your hands around my neck

by rujakcuka



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dreams and Nightmares, Established Relationship, F/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28317807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rujakcuka/pseuds/rujakcuka
Summary: This is not the first time he dreams of his wife, with her sleeping peacefully beside him. However, this time is entirely different.(Five times Eren dreams of another self of Mikasa. All of them are nightmares.)
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Comments: 6
Kudos: 82





	your hands around my neck

**Author's Note:**

> **warning:** (1) a tiny spoiler of the recent manga chapters _if you squint_. (2) title taken from arctic monkeys' _505_.

This is not the first time he dreams of his wife, with her sleeping peacefully beside him.

However, this time is entirely different.

Eren can’t fully grasp of what had happened, yet the image of a smaller Mikasa is vivid in his head nonetheless, trembling in his arms, eyes full of fear. It quite hurts him that he couldn’t do anything to soothe her pain; he stuck with killing people who hurt her instead. Red filled his vision, both figuratively and literally.

The thing is that he firstly met Mikasa when both of them were already in adulthood, driven by passion and uncertainty at the same time. The woman he knows very well is stable and soft despite her tough demeanor. The little girl in his dream is nothing like that. He feels that he knows her somewhere, but also doesn’t.

She’s woken up by his ragged breath. “Eren,” calls her in attempt to keep him concentrated, reaching out so his mind won’t accidentally shatter to pieces. “Did you just have a nightmare?”

“Yeah,” he says, quite not knowing that he’s capable of murder even in his dream.

Mikasa blinks, curiosity beginning to take over her drowsiness. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Eren answers immediately, probably too fast for his liking. He nearly winces. “It’s blurred anyway. Let’s just go back to sleep.”

Mikasa opens her mouth, but doesn’t say anything in the end.

* * *

The second time Eren dreams of a different self of Mikasa, she’s not that different.

She was still smaller, perhaps just stepping into adolescence, but she began to be a female he’s familiar with. Her hair was short—strangely he remembered telling her to get that haircut, in spite of his current favoritism towards her longer hair—and she wore some kind of military uniform. In the most bizarre sense of him, it kind of suited her, like she was born for it.

And he hates the idea. She doesn’t belong to battlefields.

The red from his first dream was apparently a red scarf hanging around her long neck. The fact that the second nightmare isn’t as intense as the first makes it clearer for him to see, to make the aforementioned piece of cloth keeping around in the back of his mind.

Eren opens his smartphone, looking for a tutorial.

Mikasa says after swallowing a mouthful of pancake, maple syrup threatening to drip on her lips, “Eren, let’s eat breakfast first.”

She can get awful when it comes to reprimanding, so in order not to deal with that first thing in the morning, he turns his screen off in subtle annoyance. His pancake peculiarly tastes more bland than usual, although the amount of maple syrup is just the same.

When Eren’s washing the dishes, Mikasa asks against the kitchen counter, “What’s keeping you on the phone?”

“How to knit,” Eren responds truthfully, between the sound of plates being put on the drying shelf, because it’s true.

“Huh.” Mikasa straightens her posture. “I can do that, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want? I can knit it for you. Maybe teaching you, if you don’t want me to?”

“It’s not about what I want.” Eren hangs the rubber gloves. “I’m thinking of knitting something for you.”

Red tints her cheeks; Eren always finds that one particular colour suits her the best. He knows the idea of him sitting through the whole knitting process alone is odd since he’s never done that, but he doesn’t know how else he can get rid of the afterthought of his dream. It’s also a way to make his spouse happy in the most unusual way, so he doesn’t mind that much.

When Eren is done with his well-made red scarf—he’s surprised himself that he could actually do that although the hassle on his workplace keeps him from getting it done earlier—he wraps it around Mikasa’s neck, a few seconds too long of his fingers lingering on her skin as a form of teasing. He senses a burst on his chest, yet rapidly shoves it away because it’s not really a happy feeling.

For some reason, he wants to cry.

* * *

The third time it happens, Eren wakes up soundlessly in the middle of the night, like he’s supposed to do that.

He shifts his gaze towards his left, where Mikasa is presently sleeping, her quiet snore calming him in the darkness, telling him that yes, it’s how he lives, happily married to the love of his life, nothing can stop him—

Yet he reaches over to her face, running his calloused fingertips over her smooth upper right cheek. Eren suddenly wonders if Mikasa is truly happy with him, really wants to spend her entire life with him, because if love means getting hurt then—

“What are you doing?”

Eren blinks, a little suffocated without realizing it himself.

“Caressing your cheek,” he says, almost bashfully. “Go to sleep.”

“Says you.” The next thing he knows, Mikasa’s kissing him, leaving both of them breathless after a full minute. His palms are cupping her face, getting nicely warm. “What are you thinking?”

“You,” Eren answers plainly. He keeps telling himself that he doesn’t lie to her. The scar flashing on his mind isn’t worth mentioning.

His hands never leave her face that night. His lips even land on where the scar was supposed to be several times. He needs remedy. He needs to be suggested that the scar was—is—never there, only present in his nightmare.

* * *

The fourth time makes it getting mentally tiring, Eren contemplates.

Mikasa’s slicing some vegetables for dinner when he remembers a dream he experienced just before the alarm on their nightstand rang. The glint of knife on her hand reminds him of a sword, because it’s a part of her heritage, currently, and maybe, just maybe, in the past too, if he were to believe in the concept of reincarnation.

Eren’s never seen her with one. The modern era doesn’t require them to have it, although the idea of owning an actual weapon to protect themselves is honestly quite appealing. Now that he thinks of it, they’ve never discussed if they ever wanted one, or if she’s ever learned of swordsmanship.

“Mikasa,” he voices absentmindedly, and nearly curses himself for saying it out loud. He decides to give it a shot. “Can you handle a sword?”

She laughs without even turning her back to face him, the sound of knife against the cutting board filling the air loudly. There’s a tone of uneasiness behind her nonchalance. “I can, actually—surprised that it took you long enough to ask. Why?”

His lovely woman is always a little insecure when it comes to her ability in protecting herself. It’s not that she’s weak; it’s the opposite. Eren always reassures her that it’s okay, nothing’s wrong with her being physically strong, possibly even stronger than him, although it goes against so many people’s view on a couple. They don’t live to please others.

But Eren also saw his lovely woman cutting meats and bones off like she was used to it. Like it was meaningless. Like she could really do it to him.

Eren doesn’t reply.

* * *

On the fifth nightmare, Eren’s had enough.

“Eren.” Mikasa hurriedly wakes up from her sleep, alarmed with her husband’s tensed sitting position. She puts her hand on his shoulder—she flinches at how warm it is, how long has he been this restless?—another clicking the lamp on the nightstand on. This has been going on for some time, she knows, but she also knows how stubborn Eren is once he’s set his mind on something.

Eren doesn’t respond. Mikasa has to shake his upper body. “Eren,” she prompts, now more stern and loud, in hope to gain his attention. Once he’s conscious and facing her, she questions, her grey eyes on his green ones, “What’s wrong?”

“I—I—“ he says, voice broken, breaking her heart but he can’t help it as he continues, “I dreamed that I knew a different version of you, but for some reason I feel that that’s also you, Mikasa. We grew up together, trained for a war against something—it’s fucking strange, I know—and we weren’t happy, always hurting each other and others too. Then I kind of went against you, you holding swords, crying as I saw you from above—hell, it feels so real, like you could’ve killed me, could’ve got yourself killed by me—“

Eren stops, fully facing Mikasa with vulnerability on display. He doesn’t like showing helplessness. He never does. It makes her sad, makes her burdened with the task on how to relieve him when he himself doesn’t know how.

But Mikasa says reassuringly, like a mother would, and holds his hands, “I’m always here with you, Eren.”

Somewhere deep inside him crumbles completely when he hears her, because then he does the only thing he'd never managed to do in his dreams: crying.

He hopes this is the last.


End file.
